BY JOHN HOUANIHAU
THE National Olympic Committee of Solomon Islands is conducting an internal assessment to finalize the list of athletes from sporting federations for the XVII Pacific Games in November.
The XVII Pacific Games 2023 begins from November 19 to December 2 in Honiara.
The review will take place from this week through next week, according to Mr. Morris Maitaki, Chair of the National Selection and Justification Committee of the National Olympic Committee of Solomon Islands (NOCSI), who was speaking at the Radio Talk Back Show on October 8 at the SIBC.
“As of the submission deadline on October 5, we have received all the choices. Taking into account the physical performance test that the justification committee conducted.
“We will conduct internal reviews for those undergoing training abroad and those (athletes) returning from China throughout the course of the next two weeks (end this week).
“This is due to the fact that people coming from China may not be guaranteed a spot in the Games.
“To monitor the final selection from this evaluation, they must check with people who are trained locally and conduct some internal trials using the data finalized from each federation’s final list.
“No new names,” Mr. Maitaki remarked.
He emphasized that since the federation’s official team list had already been submitted, there were no valid justifications.
According to him, the justification committee will credit the list when the NSJC meets one-on-one with all of the federation technical coaches, presidents, and secretaries over the next two weeks to go over the final lists.
“We cross check, and then we reconfirm those names.
“We developed two processes for the selections made by the justification committee, as I have indicated in numerous meetings and Talk Back shows. The first is for the national federations to have their own selection criteria, and the second is that we have a generic criteria that is enabled by the justification committee,” he added.
Mr Maitaki later added that in earlier weeks, they went over this criteria with all the technical specialists and federations.
“We have stated very clear to federations that every selections have to come from the federations with their selection criteria so when it comes to justification committee we have to check against those criteria,” he stated.
He claimed that following that, the final team would be determined and approved by the National Olympic Committee Board before being announced by the Chef de Mission (CDM).
“After the endorsement from the Justification Committee after sitting with one on one with respective federations, we will endorse and we submit to the President of NOCSI and the Board to approve and the CDM would be announced,” Maitaki added.
